CLAREMONT — A 37-year-old Claremont woman faces criminal charges after police found her hiding inside a clothes dryer after she allegedly fired a gun while “hallucinating,” according to police.
Leisa Pfenning, of West Terrace Street, has been charged with multiple counts of reckless conduct with a deadly weapon and assaulting police officers after she kicked and struggled with them as they carried her to a cruiser. It took several officers to secure her inside the cab, according to court documents.
Police ultimately determined her husband was not home when Pfenning, who police said appeared to be high on drugs, discharged the gun. No one was wounded on Thursday afternoon in downtown Claremont.
But the incident drew a large police response involving multiple agencies, including New Hampshire Fish & Game, as reports came in from callers about a woman who had approached people claiming that her husband was trying to kill her, according to police.
Pfenning pleaded not guilty to the misdemeanor charges, but did not enter a plea on the felony charges during her arraignment in Claremont District Court on Friday afternoon. She was ordered held without bail, pending a probable cause hearing.
The police response was complicated by “miscommunication” with a witness who called 911, erroneous assumptions about the location of Pfenning’s husband and Pfenning’s own alleged “manic” and “paranoid” state of mind, according to the police affidavit in support of the charges.
Police said they responded at 4:21 p.m. to a call from a woman who reported gunfire in the area of Elm and Spring streets. She described being approached by a woman who “stated that her boyfriend was trying to kill her and had a large gun.”
That woman — later identified as Pfenning — was located by a responding officer near 24 Elm St. on a snowbank with her dog, the police affidavit said. She appeared to be in distress and was holding a black pistol in her hand.
Pfenning immediately dropped and stepped away from the pistol, which was secured by the police officer, according to the affidavit. Pfenning told the officer that “he” had a “big gun” and pointed to a nearby porch.
The officer wrote in the affidavit that he instructed Pfenning to “get behind” 24 Elm St. while he laid prone on the snowbank with his weapon trained on the porch.
At that point, police received a call from a man who said a woman “with a firearm” had entered a nearby apartment, according to the affidavit. The responding officers left their position and located the male caller, ordered him at gunpoint to raise his hands and frisked him for a weapon. The male caller told the officers there was a “miscommunication” and that the female intruder “didn’t have a gun but had a dog” and that she was in the basement.
The officers went down to the basement where they located Pfenning “in the dryer, which was loaded with clothing” with the door “almost entirely closed,” the affidavit said. Pfenning, who appeared “very sweaty, manic and paranoid,” told police her “husband was trying to kill her.” She said earlier she had fired two shots at her husband at their apartment on West Terrace Street but that he had not been struck.
When the police attempted to get Pfenning to leave the basement for a “safe location” with them, she became hysterical and physically resisted, knocking things off the shelves and forcing the officers to carry her bodily up the stairs while she kicked them, according to the affidavit.
After Pfenning was secured in a cruiser, police returned to her West Terrace address under the impression that her husband was inside the residence and possibly wounded, according to the affidavit. But when they reached the husband by phone, he said that he was not at the residence when Pfenning fired the gun. Instead, he was at his mother’s residence several blocks away.
“It was determined that (the husband) was not present when the shots were fired, further indicating that Leisa was hallucinating,” the affidavit said.
Four firearms — a shotgun, two rifles and a handgun — that belonged to the couple were found by two police dogs.
The husband told police that earlier in the day Pfenning had taken a “handful” of Adderall that “caused her behavior to escalate,” the affidavit said.
When police recovered Pfenning’s jacket from the Spring Street address where she had been discovered in the clothes dryer, they found “several bottles” of prescription Oxycontin, Oxycodone and amphetamine/dextroamphetamine with her name on them, the affidavit said. Police also found what they described as “crushed powder” among the bottles.